


The Light of Our Armistice

by Care



Category: Into the Woods - Sondheim/Lapine
Genre: F/M, Fairy tale retelling, Incest, Original Characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1623734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Care/pseuds/Care
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the woods, stranger things have yet to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light of Our Armistice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for celeria

It was Amelia who found the crocus, growing unobtrusively underneath the eaves on the cottage's south side. It was barely spring yet, the frost just beginning the melt. The air smelled like pine needles, trampled by their feet all winter. Her apron was dirty with a collected season of grime.

She found the crocus on the same day that Papa left for the last time. Bernard helped saddle Juniper while Stepmother wiped at her eyes with a freshly laundered handkerchief on the front stoop. Amelia was given a hug and kiss by Papa before he disappeared through the trees. He promised her sweets when he returned, and kicked the mare into motion.

"Come along then," Stepmother said when they could see him no longer. "The chores won't do themselves." She had a pinched mouth, a worried look.

Bernard shrugged his shoulders at Amelia, smiled. He was almost half a head taller then her now, practically unrecognizable. If not for their identical mops of blond curls and the same shape of their eyes, Amelia could have forgotten that they were twins entirely.

"Did you nick me some cheese?" he whispered to her as she passed by.

She tsked under her breath, but slipped him the little square she hid in her apron pocket all the same. His fingers were cold when they briefly intertwined with hers.

He winked at her when she walked inside; she had to turn away to laugh.

**

She thought only children must be terribly lonely. She wasn't sure what people did without a twin, a best friend, a brother that she shared everything with.

They used to sleep in the same bed as children, curled together like puppies in the center of their straw mattress pulled next to the hearth in winter. Sometimes Amelia wished they still could, to keep away the cold that made her toes feel like ice even when she stuck them under the quilt.

She slid out of bed and tiptoed across the small loft barefoot. Bernard was snoring lightly in his corner. She untucked a corner of the blanket and got in next to him, curving her body around his like a comma.

"Your feet are cold," he mumbled sleepily, and moved his legs away.

"Do you think Papa will be back before spring planting?" she asked in the still dark.

He made an irritated noise. "Shut up, Amelia. Go to sleep."

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the back of his neck, breathing slowly, feeling the soft tickle of his hair on her skin.

"Yes," Bernard said after a long minute. "I think Papa will be back before spring planting."

**

The messenger that delivered the news was named Robert. He looked their age, awkward and gangly, exhaustion evident in the hollows of his face. Amelia stared at him while Stepmother cried, and Father Stephen shifted uncomfortably in his seat by the fire.

"Was it quick?" Bernard asked when Robert was silent. "Did he suffer much?"

"I don't -- " Robert glanced at Father Stephen. "Instantaneous."

"Thank the Lord," the priest murmured and crossed himself quickly. "I am truly sorry for your loss."

Stepmother bowed her head. "Thank you, Father, for being here in our time of crisis."

Amelia dropped the kettle before she could put it on to heat and she watched, as if from a very far distance, as it fell to the floor, rolling before water spilled from it and splashed her feet. Everyone jumped from the noise and Stepmother shot her a glare from her seat.

"Sorry," Amelia said, after a prolonged minute. She picked up the kettle.

That night she lay alone on her cot in the loft, listening to the crackling of the fire, and the slow rock of Papa's chair as Bernard sat awake all night.

**

"I think Stepmother is going to marry again," Bernard said glumly, kicking dirt from the bottom of his boots.

Amelia took an apple from her apron and handed it to him. She was perched unsteadily on the lip of the well, holding tight to the edge so she didn't fall in. Bernard shined the apple on his shirt front, forehead dotted with sweat, and put an arm around her to keep her still.

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. It smelled like damp earth, plants growing, greenness. She felt the roots in her own bones. It was her favorite time of year.

"Amelia?" Bernard asked through a mouthful of apple.

"Don't be ridiculous, Bernard," she said. "She wouldn't so soon."

"Oh, really?" He swallowed. "She was flirting with the wheelwright yesterday. I saw them in his shop."

"It was probably nothing."

She still sometimes caught herself looking out the window for Papa, hoping to hear the creaky sway of his cart stopping before the cottage, and the soft whinny of Juniper. She missed being a child, still able to sit on Papa's knee, breathing in his scent of tobacco and sawdust. He had been gone for two months and she still wanted him to come back so acutely, sometimes, that she couldn't breathe.

"She wouldn't, would she?" she asked Bernard, nervously.

He shrugged and pitched the apple core into the woods. "Who can say? She doesn't have any responsibility to us anymore. She's just a widow."

"But we don't have anyone else," Amelia whispered and twisted her free hand in her apron.

**

The wedding was in late summer, the air buzzing with heat, and the crown of flowers in Amelia's hair felt heavier then if it had been made of lead.

"I'll care for you both," the Wheelwright promised them, drunk from the reception wine. His face was red and shiny. "Don't you worry. I always admired your papa for taking the two of you in."

Bernard's face tightened and his eyes were very bright. "Papa was kind."

"Of course he was," the Wheelwright said and swung around to toast again.

**

That had been Amelia's favorite story, the one about Papa finding them in the forest. He would put an arm around each of them and hug them tight while he sifted through memories.

"You were wrapped in linens, abandoned at the foot of a very tall oak. Both of you. And it was getting dark out and no one was around. Bernard, you were crying, a fine set of lungs. I didn't see anyone there and the linens were very fine, so I thought maybe that some lady had left you both. Well, I took you both home with me right away and here you've been with me ever since."

Ever since and ever will, Amelia had thought. That was not true anymore.

**

The harvest was poor that year, which didn't affect them directly, but it meant that business for the Wheelwright slowed too. He did calculations in the back of his shop, muttering to himself while Amelia scrubbed the counters clean and swept the floor.

Bernard hated living in town, and though the cottage was left to him, he wasn't old enough to go back to it on his own. Instead he spent his days in the small garden behind the house, working out the Latin Father Stephen gave him to study, and sulking.

"You're being a child," Amelia hissed at him as they prepared for bed.

"Don't tell me that you enjoy living here too," Bernard snarled back and turned to face the wall.

"At least I won't throw tantrums about it," she snapped and went to sleep angry.

**

As it were, she was scrubbing the counters down when she heard the conversation from the back room, whispered and urgent and anxious. She set her brush in the bucket of soapy water and crept towards the cracked-open door, trying to hush her own breathing.

"We won't be able to feed them -- we can barely feed ourselves!" the Wheelwright exclaimed.

"I promised their father I'd care for them," Stepmother protested.

There was a murmur, too low for Amelia to make out. And then: "We'll have our own children, dearest. They aren't even blood relations."

"I don't know," Stepmother said doubtfully. "Bernard wouldn't want you to sell the cottage."

Amelia had to put a hand over her own mouth to smother her startled squeak of surprise. She pressed her ear to the door again, but there was only low murmurings again, and she couldn't strain too far.

"Leave them in the forest?" She heard at least Stepmother say.

"We'll do it tomorrow. We'll take them there and abandon them. We'll say they wandered off from us; they were too distraught over their father's death."

She didn't wait to hear if Stepmother assented or not. When she dipped her hand back in the bucket, it was trembling and she could hardly hold it steady as she scrubbed hard.

"For goodness sake, Amelia, don't destroy the wood!" Stepmother admonished when she emerged from the back room. She looked very pale; it would have been quite queer if Amelia hadn't known what was happening. "When you're done with that, come in the kitchen and give me a hand with supper."

**

Bernard snorted when she told him, finally, in the privacy of their bedroom. She was shivering in her nightgown, her hair plaited and her face scrubbed.

"Have you gone mad, Amelia? They wouldn't. Besides, I've decided to move into the cottage next spring, if you would like to come." He rolled over to his side and quickly fell asleep.

She waited until he was snoring lightly and crept out of the house. Under the moonlight, the pebbles in the backyard garden shimmered. She filled her pockets until she couldn't take anymore.

**

They rode in the cart until they reached the cottage, looking small and disheveled under dappled sunlight. Bernard hopped out of the back and peered through the windows, frowning at the dirt that had collected on the glass. The Wheelwright squinted at the walls and went around to take a peek into the well.

"It does brings back memories," Stepmother said from where she was sitting, her voice almost wistful.

Amelia found it hard to swallow past the lump in her throat. "Sure," she managed to croak out, and slipped her hand in her apron pocket to rub her thumb across the pebbles. They felt smooth and cold.

"You should sell it. It would make a nice handful of money," the Wheelwright said to Bernard as he came back around. "Any decent woodcutter would want it. Your papa's shed is still there."

She thought she could feel Bernard stiffen, even as she studied the rigidness in his stance. His eyes flicked to her and then back to the Wheelwright.

"I don't think so," he replied, quite pleasantly.

"Hmm. Well, whatever you say, son." The Wheelwright clapped his hands together and beamed at the two of them. "Now, we have to gather some firewood. Bring the tools, Bernard. We'll all go."

Amelia looked into the dark, twisted woods. She had never gone far in them with Papa at her side. She rubbed the pebbles harder.

"Lunch." Stepmother handed her a hunk of bread. "Come on, girl. Hustle!"

**

At first she dropped them close together, every few feet. But she was going to run out of them if they kept walking at the pace they were going. She slowed until she was trailing the others and started dropping the pebbles at carefully measured distances.

At the fork in the path, she whispered _right right right_ to herself, and pretended her bootlace was untied so she could stack two flat rocks on top of one another on the side of the trail.

When she stood, Bernard was there. He took her hand.

"How are we going to find our way out?" he hissed in her ear.

She carefully adjusted his shirt collar and made her mouth a thin line. "I'm taking care of it."

**

"The two of you rest here and build up a fire. Your stepmother and I will be back soon."

Amelia settled herself on the ground, watching the Wheelwright and Stepmother disappear into the trees. She tore a chunk off her bread and chewed.

"Amelia," Bernard said, brows furrowed.

"Go to sleep, Bernard," she told him.

**

When they woke up, the moon was swollen and full. It was so bright they didn't need a torch, even though the fire had gone out anyway. Bernard laughed when she showed him the path of pebbles, luminescent under the light, and they traced their way back to the cottage.

Inside the loft was cold and dusty, but they tucked themselves around each other on the floor, and slept.

**

"Thank heavens you're safe!" Stepmother said when they found their way back to town the next morning. "We got lost ourselves and didn't know how to find our way back to you."

They ate late autumn apples and creamy porridge with stirred honey. Amelia took a bath in the kitchen, washing her long blonde hair in the steaming tub and braiding it when it was clean. She felt like she had been gone a lot longer then just one night and she studied her body in the water, unsure of what she'd see. She ran a hand across her ribcage and felt the tautness of her skin.

"They say one of the princesses had hair like that," Stepmother remarked, bringing with her another ewer of water. She poured it in the tub and sat down in a kitchen chair, her hair matted with sweat. She didn't seem to mind. "In the castle, before you were born. They called her Rapunzel and she had the sweetest voice."

"What happened to her?" Amelia asked.

"The giant killed her," Stepmother said briskly and shook out the towel she had, handing it off. "It was a pity. She had just given birth to little twin babes. They died too."

How sad, Amelia thought, her heart aching unexpectedly.

**

That night, when she turned back the covers on her bed, she found a little bundle of sweetmeats on her pillow. They were tied with a lavender ribbon and when she turned, Bernard was giving her a sheepish smile.

"Thank God for you," he said and gave her a hug. "Otherwise we wouldn't have made it out of the woods."

"Hush now," she said, even though she was touched by his present.

He tucked stray wisps of Amelia's hair behind her ears, framed her face with his hands and looked at her. "I do trust you, you know," he told her. "After all, you are all I have."

"And I trust you," she replied lightly, pulse quickening. His touch was unfamiliar and yet the same.

Bernard kissed her cheek and smiled like a little boy. "Love you."

**

The Wheelwright woke them at dawn, his face stretched into a cheerless smile.

"What's going on?" Bernard mumbled, still half-asleep.

"Buck up now, son!" the Wheelwright said. "We didn't get enough firewood yesterday! Come on now. We know the way back to the clearing today and none of us are getting lost."

"I don't have any pebbles," Amelia said, stricken, when the Wheelwright left the room.

"It's alright. It'll be alright," he reassured her. "We'll think of something."

**

This time it was Bernard that dragged behind. He was dropping something onto the ground from the pocket of his trousers, but Amelia couldn't tell what it was. She trudged on behind Stepmother.

"Stop lollygagging!" Stepmother called out. "Hurry up, Bernard!"

**

They sat together in the clearing, close together and not speaking as the sun went down and light disappeared. In the dark she touched his shoulder and wondered if that was what it was like to touch a sweetheart, to feel his arm pressed against hers, and to be aware of the heat of him

"What did you use?" she asked.

He didn't answer for a long while. Amelia thought maybe he fell asleep.

"The bread," he finally answered. "It was all I had."

"Well. Maybe it'll still be there?" she said, hopeful.

He shook his head and dropped it to rest against her own. "The forest critters will have eaten it." He sounded so tired, more like Papa than Bernard.

"Don't say that -- "

"We have to find our way out ourselves, Amelia." He raked a hand a through his hair. "I don't know how."

**

Her mouth felt dry when she woke up and it tasted terribly sour. She could smell the crispness that was fall, smell it so close that for a second she was convinced that she had become it somehow. But she opened her eyes and she was still all girl, leaning against a tree.

Bernard was sitting on a log, on the other side of the fire pit. "There's a stream over yonder," he gestured to the east. "The water is clear and sweet."

She followed the direction of his finger until she could hear the slow bubbling of water. Amelia scrambled down a bank of dead leaves to the water's edge, drawing as close as she could without getting herself wet. She scooped water up with her hands and drank deeply.

"Come on," Bernard said, appearing at the top of the embankment. "We have to leave before night falls again." He kept looking around, as if expecting someone to find them.

Amelia dried her mouth with a corner of her apron and followed him.

**

They wandered all morning. Everything looked the same to her even though Bernard insisted they were getting somewhere. She didn't want to contradict him while they were lost.

When the sun was directly overhead, they sat down and shared her bread. She licked the crumbs off her fingertips and rested.

They fell asleep with their arms around each other, tucked into the side of a fallen tree. She tried not to be too scared, but her hand still curled into a tight fist against Bernard's shirt, his mouth against her ear.

**

The house looked like a dream at first, unreal and swimming. She could smell it too, all sugar, and then it almost seemed like she was eating it. She could conjure up the taste of the gingerbread in her mouth, the way Stepmother made it for Yule, and it was wonderful. The frosting looked like untouched winter snow, but Amelia had a feeling that if she dragged a finger through it, it would be sticky and sweet.

"I think the windows are made of marzipan," she heard Bernard exhale behind her.

They walked towards it together, cautiously, holding hands. She broke off a piece of windowsill, the bread coming apart in her hands easily. She gave half the piece to Bernard and bit into hers. It was rich and divine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bernard shimmy up to the roof.

"A house of cake!" Amelia laughed aloud. She broke off a larger piece and ate it slowly

Bernard was seated against the chimney, eating a shingle, when the woman emerged from the house. She was old, older then anyone Amelia had ever seen, and leaned heavily upon a walking stick. Her eyes, when Amelia looked at them, were milky white.

"Is that children there, nibbling on my house?" Her voice was quavery.

"Madame," Amelia said, dropping her gingerbread. "I apologize -- "

"No, it was my idea, madame," Bernard interjected as he clambered back down. "Please, my sister wasn't -- "

The old woman touched Amelia's arm, felt the bones of her wrist. "Come inside, children. You are so skinny."

Amelia glanced at Bernard and he shrugged at her. She looked back at the old woman, confused, and withdrew her arm. They followed her into the house.

**

There was a bedroom in the back of the gingerbread house, where all Amelia could smell was sugar and molasses. The old woman had fed them a meal of venison stew. Her stomach felt stretched; she had been greedy and wanted second helpings. Bernard threw back the thick quilt on the bed and climbed in, groaning as he lay down on the mattress, stretching out. She followed, putting her head on his shoulder.

"Do you think there's something funny about her?" she asked, quietly.

He laughed softly and tapped the headboard with his knuckles. "Of course I do. She lives in a gingerbread house in the middle of the forest. There's certainly something odd going on. But as long as she keeps feeding us food like that and giving us a bed to sleep in, I could care less."

"Bernard," she whispered after a moment. She could make out the lines of his profile, see the curve of his eyelashes against his cheek. He was losing the baby fat in his face.

He made a small noise of acknowledgement in the dark.

"After we find our way back out of the forest, I'd like to move to the cottage with you."

He shifted and turned so they were face-to-face, so close. She thought of all the years they had spent together, as brother and sister, as best friends, as ever-changing as they were.

"I'd like that," Bernard said, and she could taste his words on her own lips.

**

She opened her eyes the next morning, and the old woman was standing by her bedside. She offered Amelia a cleanly starched apron and a smile that made the room feel infinitely smaller.

"You may call me the Witch," she told Amelia. "Get up. You must make your brother breakfast."

Amelia turned to wake Bernard, but she found the place at her side empty. She ran a hand over the imprint in the mattress and found it cold to the touch.

"Where is he?" she asked the Witch, heart leaping into her mouth. "What have you done with him?"

**

"Amelia," he said, and he sounded oh-so-scared.

She curved her fingers around the iron bars of his cage, touched his face as best she could.

"Shh," she said, trying to hold her voice firm. "I'll find a way to get you out."

"She wants to eat me," Bernard said. "That's what the Witch said."

"You said that you trust me," she reminded him. "Don't you still?"

"Certainly, I just -- "

"Trust me."

**

She cooked meals to fatten him -- sumptuous roasts, bread with crusts that crackled when bit into, sweets of all kinds. She brought buckets in from the well and scrubbed the floors. She tended to the fire; the Witch liked the house to be hot. She made the beds and cleaned Bernard's cage.

Every morning the Witch would ask Bernard to stick out his finger and he would stick out a chicken bone.

Every morning the Witch would make an irritated noise and Amelia thought, this is it, today is the day she's going to kill us both; she doesn't want to keep us alive anymore.

But there was always one more morning, one more day.

Until there wasn't.

**

The Witch was standing at her bedside again.

"Stoke the fire in the oven. He may be scrawny, but I'm sure he'll have some meat on his bones nonetheless," the Witch announced. "Tomorrow I'll have you for breakfast, so make sure the oven is extra hot."

Amelia cried for ten minutes before she felt she could get herself out of bed.

She thought of that princess's twins, dying in the woods, and her fingers shook when she tried to tie her apron on. Twins in these woods apparently didn't have much luck.

**

The idea came to her as she loaded the oven with wood.

"Is it hot enough yet?" the Witch demanded behind her.

"I-I don't know," Amelia said. "How do I tell?"

"Stupid girl, you stick your head in and see!" the Witch snarled.

"I'm not sure how to do it. You'll have to show me."

She didn't think it was going to work, but the Witch was, after all, blind. Still. She had to hold her breath until the Witch shoved her aside and stuck her head into the oven, wincing at the heat. Amelia gulped and threw her weight against the Witch, pushing her in, and slammed the oven door shut.

She would never forget those screams, never forget the exact pitch and the length and the quality. She wouldn't forget how the Witch's dress felt under her palms, how for a second Amelia thought she wouldn't be able to go through with it.

**

They found kerchiefs in the house and wrapped food from the pantry in them, only items that wouldn't spoil: apples, cheese, bread, dried meat. Amelia filled a waterskin at the well.

They left the gingerbread house like they came, hand-in-hand.

**

"Amelia," he said when they stopped for lunch.

She turned to look at him and he kissed her, tentative and slow.

The woods, she thought, were the strangest place she had been. She put her hands against his chest and felt the jump of his heartbeat, just like hers.

Here those twins died, she thought, and here I have been with my brother.

"Let's go home," she said when they broke apart.

Bernard gave her a small smile and touched her hair. "Let's go home," he echoed. 

 


End file.
